§ Nice Art: François Vigneault made a downloadable, printable calendar for 2017 in both French and English. I desperately need to print this out and construct it.
§ And another! Rx Comics, a well regard comics shop in Vancouver, is shutting down after 14 years:
Yes, you read that right. Rx Comics will be closing it’s doors permanently at the end of January. There are many factors that have lead to this decision, but mostly it comes down to simple economics. We just can’t afford to keep the store open anymore.
We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our loyal customers who have made the last 14 years possible. We most certainly couldn’t have come this far without you.
This Wednesday will be our last (almost) full shipment of new comics. Unfortunately, there will be no Image comics this week (with the exception of the corrected copies of Saga #41) and starting next week we may have a few odd titles trickling in, but we will not have anything from the big publishers. We do apologize for the short notice, and hope that the other stores around town will be able to help you get your weekly fix of new stuff.
Based on the comments to the post – and the Brandon Graham-drawn image of the store above – this was a much loved shop, where a lot of Vancouver’s comics community shopped. I don’t know any details of the closing but it’s end times for comics for sure.*
* Okay not really end times, but the downturn is no joke.
§ Tony Isabella offered a list of RESOLUTIONS FOR THE COMICS INDUSTRY which, if adopted, would stave off end times for a month or two.
Don’t feed the trolls. Stop responding to those idiots. Okay, mock them if you have a free moment, but don’t waste your time and your creative energies doing online battle with these fools. Not when I and your other readers would prefer to see you devote yourself to your next story or novel or screenplay.
Much more of this folksy, hard won wisdom in the link.
§ LISTs!!!!My Top 5 New, Creator-Owned Comics from 2016 from The Odyssey.
Comics Alliance has All The Winners from their 2016 best of.
§ Unlike the rest of the comics media which is circling the drain with a final, fitful sigh, Graphic Policy is coming out swinging in 2017 with an ambitious new schedule of recurring features and reviews. CRAZY TALK.
It’s been a rough year for comic blogs and news sites. Quite a few have shut down, absorbed by other sites, or comic coverage for some sites have dwindled. Even those with “comic” in their name seem more focused on television and movies. We put comics first with about 70-75% of the coverage focused on comics and the rest of that percent usually having to do with comics (games based on comics for instance).
I’m here to say, that’s not changing for us. In fact, we’re doubling down on that.
What does that mean? Starting today we’re launching regular features and columns. Other sites are cutting them, we’re expanding them, and this is just a start… Something new every day that you can come here and look forward to. Some are reviews with a specific focus. Some are columns that had false starts and are returning. All of it will hopefully be interesting and fun.
The new schedule includes Manga Monday, Euro comics, a radio show and this weekly look at marketing:
*NEW-ish* The Comics Are All Right – We got four of these last year and expect this to return… weekly. Each week we dive into the inner workings of comics and focus on marketing, what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and base it on data and facts. Reality based on opinion has no place in the column. Data is king!
§ Oh speaking of media, The Dot and Line is a newish (well it launched last year) animation blog that covers the field with a very Beat-like demeanor which you might enjoy.
§ And here’s Misty Knight’s Uninformed Afro from Jamie Broadnax and Stephanie Williams that will “explore the origin stories, character development, and story arcs of our favorite Black superheroines in comics. A show from the perspective of two comic books fans that wish to shed light and also learn more about these women.”
So it sounds like comics and nerd media is made of win already in 2017!
§ Paul Levitz is getting a long interview at Newsarama, and he explains what the DC Implosion was all about, among many other things:
Nrama: Let’s back up a minute. You said, “the DC Implosion.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
Levitz: It’s kind of a mythical thing at this point, but the winter of ’77 was a hideous winter in America, particularly in the Midwest, where the comics ship from. And newsstands sales went to hell. They’d already been lousy, but they got even dramatically worse. In the summer of ’78, DC was about the launch a major initiative called the “DC Explosion,” which was increasing the page count of the books to 40 pages and raising the price to the astronomical price of 50 cents. As the sales were coming in from the winter, the parent corporation was scared to death about the shape of our industry and wanted us to take a more conservative path. We had to cut back, had to shrink some books back to 32 pages. We had to cancel a lot of titles. It was a very unpleasant time for the field.
§ Dave Sim disses PLAYBOY @ http://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2016/12/harvey-kurtzmans-little-annie-fanny.html
“I think much hinges upon your innermost intention with the material which I think, in the case of Kurtzman and Elder on LITTLE ANNIE FANNY was a) to be entertaining b) to be funny and c) to have steady work. PLAYBOY was a lot more exploitive of women than I perceived it to be at the time (or, at least, I perceive it that way now) and I did get rid of my PLAYBOYs because they seemed unhealthy in that sense.”
Comments are closed.